No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied Palestinian

originally posted by: OpinionatedB
The title of the quoted article is No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Many people are saying that Israel has the right to go into Gaza and bomb them into oblivion, as a measure of self defense. This article clearly states they do not. What Israel has, under international law, is the right to use it's police powers with rare use of militarized force as measures of self defense, but the self defense measures themselves cannot take the form of warfare since the warfare was concluded and has rendered Gaza and the West Bank an occupied territory of Israel.

Israel thus, under international law has the duty to protect Palestinian citizens as well as has the duty of restoring order and ensuring a normal day to day life for the Palestinian citizens. Israel is doing none of this.

Occupation Law prohibits an occupying power from initiating armed force against its occupied territory. By mere virtue of the existence of military occupation, an armed attack, including one consistent with the UN Charter, has already occurred and been concluded. Therefore the right of self-defense in international law is, by definition since 1967, not available to Israel with respect to its dealings with real or perceived threats emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip population. To achieve its security goals, Israel can resort to no more than the police powers, or the exceptional use of militarized force, vested in it by IHL. This is not to say that Israel cannot defend itself—but those defensive measures can neither take the form of warfare nor be justified as self-defense in international law. As explained by Ian Scobbie:

To equate the two is simply to confuse the legal with the linguistic denotation of the term ”defense.“ Just as ”negligence,“ in law, does not mean ”carelessness” but, rather, refers to an elaborate doctrinal structure, so ”self-defense” refers to a complex doctrine that has a much more restricted scope than ordinary notions of ”defense.“

Once armed conflict is initiated, and irrespective of the reason or legitimacy of such conflict, the jus in bello legal framework is triggered. Therefore, where an occupation already is in place, the right to initiate militarized force in response to an armed attack, as opposed to police force to restore order, is not a remedy available to the occupying state.Source

The source is a Palestinian source that I have used, but the argument is quite valid. The argument is, in an occupied territory the occupiers cannot use all out warfare, but only policing efforts to restore order in the occupied territory. This is a valid argument under international law.

Except israel doesn't occupy Gaza which is why Hamas is in power there

a reply to: logicguy69

I suspect every politicians knows that Israel is breaking international law but with many of their own relatives living is Israel, what does anyone expect, apart from a silence and no action taken.

What people are fed up about is the unequal and very different strength of the rockets involved - the Palestinian rockets are home-made whilst the Israeli rockets are manufactured for a war zone and each rocket has huge destructive ability. It is an unequal fight and a stupid one - but when harrassed as thje Palestinian are by the Israel armed forces etc they appear to have little choice of action.

Personally as disgusting as that female in the Israeli cabinet is in her sentiments of annihilating the Palestinians and all the other vile murderous ideas she has spouted, it seems that unless one sides capitulates or dies out, there will be little peace in that area.

It would not surprise me to find that were the Palestinians not a problem the Orthodox would be fighting the Un-orthodox and it will be simply just another patch of arguing people such as northern ireland and other hotspots where religion holds its flag high.

originally posted by: OpinionatedB
No excuse at all to simply ignore it.

So what excuse has Hamas got for ignoring it?

originally posted by: Irishhaf
Why has no surrounding nation done a blessed thing for the Palestinians other than use them in a proxy war against Israel?

They must really hate them!

a reply to: logicguy69

According to the UN Gaza is still an occupied territory and will be so long as Israel controls it. It takes more than unilaterally saying they don't occupy Gaza, it takes actually leaving the Palestinians to their own fate, letting them control their own sea ports, letting them determine how much fuel they purchase from another country for the running of their power plants, letting them determine how many building materials they allow into their country and the list goes on.

You know... giving them the freedom to be a country.

Since 2007, when Dugard offered up his authoritative calculus, much has changed, but none of these changes support the contention that Israel does not exercise effective control over Gaza. Sara Roy, in a recent Boston Globe article, offers examples of how, despite the absence of a military administration, Israel continues to control what happens “on the ground” on a daily basis. She writes:

Israeli-imposed buffer zones—areas of restricted access—now absorb nearly 14 percent of Gaza’s total land and at least 48 percent of total arable land. Similarly, the sea buffer zone covers 85 percent of the maritime area promised to Palestinians in the Oslo Accords, reducing 20 nautical miles to three, where waters are fouled by sewage flows in excess of 23 million gallons daily.

Assaf Kfoury, who traveled into Gaza as part of an academic delegation in October, summarizes some of the well-documented elements of Israel’s ongoing effective control. He writes:

The Gaza Strip is hemmed in from all sides. The Israeli naval blockade prevents all transport of people and goods from the sea. The land border with Israel is tightly sealed. Rafah at the southern edge of the Strip…is the only and hard way in and out, via Egypt, for the vast majority of Palestinians. Israel controls the Erez crossing, strictly monitoring entry of international aid workers, journalists, and a trickle of Palestinians…Over past decades and years, Palestinian industry has been systematically sabotaged in favor of Israeli industry, including industry (or whatever is worthy of the name) in Gaza, whose economy is essentially controlled by Israel. Most alarming is a recent UN report, Gaza in 2020, which suggests that Gaza will no longer be a “livable place” in 2020.

Kfoury also offers some examples of Israel’s effective control that he witnessed firsthand.

Turning one’s back to the misery inland, and looking out to the Mediterranean and its shimmering waters, should normally be a soothing escape, but not in Gaza. Our mornings over breakfast at the hotel were punctuated by gunfire from somewhere off shore. These were not dynamite sticks that kids or poor people detonated underwater to collect large quantities of stunned fish, as I initially thought, but gunfire from Israeli patrol boats warning fishermen to stay inside the three nautical-mile limit. On the morning we left the Strip, we were told that two fishermen who went beyond the limit were killed the day before.

www.jadaliyya.com...
www.israeli-occupation.org...
unispal.un.org...
blog.unwatch.org...

a reply to: Irishhaf

Just a couple things, hints really. A very well known Salafi Jihadist group who operates in Gaza posted a youtube video of them praising ISIS and declaring their allegiance (the video is now down and the account associated with it terminated, so I cannot post it) - And some ISIS flags were raised during a funeral in Gaza. Rumor also that a 21 year old Palestinian died in Syria after he went there and was fighting with ISIS in Syria.

Hamas denies all of it, says it is lies of Israel. But I don't know... I'd say that ISIS has more sympathy in Gaza than Hamas would like - so they deny any, and Israel is saying there is now an actual presence, which may be a stretch.

But those 3 bombs during the ceasefire that Hamas denied makes me wonder.

If this is true, then Palestinians civilians may as well leave by any means they can get out, to anywhere they might be accepted... because all hope for them is gone. That is all the reason Israel would need to turn Gaza into glass... and no one could say boo to them. Which is why we must temper our thoughts, and make certain that it is a real presence and not propaganda from Israel.

Although, it must be considered what ISIS claims of itself, in regard to Israel:

In response to Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge,” ISIS released a statement declaring that they were simply too busy killing fellow Muslims to bother with a war on Jewish people. “The greatest answer to this question is the Qur’an, where Allah speaks about the nearby enemy–those Muslims who have become infidels–as they are more dangerous than those which were already infidels,” explained an ISIS spokesman on Twitter, who was not identified.

Link

Which is why I think that right now it might only be sympathizers, rather than actual members. At any rate, da'sh (ISIS) is bad news, and the hints worrisome.